What a Long, Hot Shower Says About You

Do your showers tend to be on the long and scalding side—or are they quick and just comfortably warm? Do you fantasize about luxuriating in a hot bath, or does that just seem like the fast-track to prunesville? Your answers to these questions may say a lot about you.

In a recent study published in the journal Emotion, researchers at Yale University discovered that people who take frequent long, hot showers or baths tend to be lonelier than people who spend less time bathing and like cooler water. Apparently, scientists have known for a little while that feelings of social warmth or coldness can be induced by experiences of physical warmth or coldness, and vice versa. (In other words: Want to feel like your dinner companions are friendly and welcoming? Wear a cashmere sweater.) But this study showed that people who felt deprived of social warmth were—literally—seeking it out in the bathroom. And these findings were dramatic: The degree to which the study's subjects felt lonely accounted for nearly 25 percent of the difference in their bathing frequency. The scientists even went so far as to conclude that physical and social warmth can be substituted in daily life.